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Chief Sources of Bias in the Selection of Employees Essay

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Chief Sources of Bias in the Selection of Employees

There are a number of issues when tackling the problem of bias in the selection of employees in the modern market environment. To bias against someone is to exert a preference or an inclination that inhibits impartial judgement. This often stems from a prejudice. Perceptual selectivity operates when we are perceiving other people. It can lead to a stereotyping in decision making and ultimately a biased view point of potential employees. However, people are less likely to use stereotypes when they are motivated to avoid using them. This essay will discuss the source of stereotypes and bias in the selection of employees and consider additional …show more content…

The problem is what we notice first about a person is often irrelevant to the assessment we want to make. This creates problems when selecting employees as the criteria for a good candidate becomes blurred with the interviewers first impressions.

"Stereotyping" is a term first applied to bias in person perception in 1922 by Walter Lippman. It states that we group together people who have similar characteristics and allocate traits to them on the basis of this grouping. Stereotyping is a four-step process. It begins by catagorising people into groups according to various criteria, such as gender, age, race and occupation. Next, it infers that all people within a particular category possess the same traits or characteristics. Then, we form expectations of others and interpret their behaviour according to our stereotypes.

Research shows that the use of stereotypes is influenced by the amount and type of information available to an individual and his or her motivation to accurately process information. They are likely to be inaccurate. However, on occasion they may be convenient because by adopting a stereotyped point of view we may be able to short cut the evaluation process and make fast predictions of behaviour.

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